Arrivals: Eyes wide open

Moving to Israel didn’t turn out to be much of a stretch for Rachel Adler, who now teaches yoga in Tel Aviv.

By GLORIA DEUTSCH
Rachel Adler 521 (photo credit: GLORIA DEUTSCH)
Rachel Adler 521
(photo credit: GLORIA DEUTSCH)
‘Teaching yoga in Tel Aviv is a highly saturated profession,’ says Rachel Adler, who settled here from Kitchener, Canada, a year ago. “It’s a bit like actors in New York.”
She should know, having studied theater there and acted off Broadway before coming to Israel. She realized very early on that being an English-speaking actress here would not be a great career choice. Yoga, on the other hand, was something she never stopped loving and she felt there could be a demand for yoga taught in English.
“I was convinced there was still room for me,” she says.
She first visited Israel on a Masa program in 2010, but she had no real intention of staying in Israel or settling here. Masa Israel Journey is a joint project of the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency for Israel to bring young adults between the ages of 18 and 30 to study here and volunteer in the community for a gap-year program. When she joined the program she still had her theatrical connections and did an internship in the Nephesh Theatre, a small professional company in Tel Aviv where she helped out as an assistant director. But she was rapidly falling out of love with the acting world.
“While I was studying Hebrew in ulpan I came to realize that a life in the theater was not what I wanted. I came to the conclusion that talent is the last thing you need in the acting profession, and looks and who you know are what really counts.”
She grew up in Kitchener in a traditional Jewish family – her mother is a doctor and her father a lawyer – in the small community of about 200 Jewish families. She studied at a Hebrew day school – there were 32 children in the entire school – and learned Hebrew but had forgotten most of it by the time she came to Israel.
The Masa program was such a success that she decided to make aliya and, in June 2011, said “au revoir” to her family in Ontario and moved to Israel as an immigrant, settling in Tel Aviv. The plan was to teach Ashtanga yoga and although she was qualified, she took further courses at Mishkan Hayoga in Tel Aviv. She is also a traditional Thai massage therapist and felt that with these two qualifications she would be able to work and support herself once she became known.
“I tried to build up my clientele by teaching on the Tel Aviv beach and I advertised everywhere – Internet sites, Esra magazine and Tel Aviv publications.”
Gradually, the idea of creating a studio in Tel Aviv to teach yoga in English began to become more and more attractive. The dream, not yet realized, is to eventually offer not just yoga but a holistic wellness center, where, among other offerings like massage and beauty treatments, yoga will be taught in many languages.
“You hear Russian, French, English and Spanish all the time and there would be no shortage of immigrants who could teach in all these languages,” she says. And she adds, only half-jokingly, “Hebrew is probably the least-spoken language in Tel Aviv these days.”
For the time being she is building up clientele and experience, trying to do all the research necessary to start her center.
“Any business venture is a risk, but I’m looking into it with my eyes wide open,” she says.
Until the yoga studio is established she had to find work to support herself, and soon after arriving she had a serendipitous meeting with Roy Ben-Shlomo, a South-African born English butler who runs a cleaning service, and became one of his star cleaners.
“I’m not ashamed to say that I do it,” she says. “It suits me because of the flexible hours and it gives me time to focus on building up my business. Until I get to the point that all I do is yoga, I’ll carry on cleaning. Everybody has to do something they don’t like in order to get ahead.”
Knowing that it is a temporary arrangement makes it easier, and eventually she and Ben-Shlomo want to build a professional arrangement.
“He wants to offer personalized yoga to his clients – in fact, be a go-to address for whatever a client needs,” she says.
Later this year, Adler will be giving yoga workshops at the Jacob’s Ladder Festival, which takes place on December 13 and 14 at Lake Kinneret. She also takes classes at Beit Hahayal where she teaches yoga to soldiers in what she describes as “bad Hebrew.”
“It doesn’t really matter what language you teach in, as one can always get across what you want to convey by demonstrating,” she says.
“My main concern is to keep people safe. A good teacher will do everything not to hurt herself and, more importantly, her pupils.”
She is also aware that not everyone can achieve the physical contortions necessary to do certain positions in yoga – like the lotus position.
“I’m constantly making sure that my students won’t injure themselves,” she says. “If it hurts, I teach a modification which is simpler.”
When she first came to Israel she was far from being committed.
“I felt sure I didn’t belong here,” she says.
The whole Masa experience, as well as meeting her Israeli boyfriend on a hike in the Negev, changed all that, and today she feels strongly that Israel is her home.